Mullane: In the Roy murders, blaming the victims

Thursday

We used to see people addicted to hard drugs as criminals. Now we see them as victims.

Tyler and Christina Roy were murdered in their Churchville home on May 1 by dope sick Daniel Mooney, a man with a heroin addiction, who stole their car and drove to Philadelphia to get his next fix.

For me, weariness has set in with the heroin scourge, now years old and still getting worse. My temper with drug addicted people who harm innocents triggered a man to write this:

“Just read your article about the murders. Just have a question. You’re assuming that he was ‘dope sick’ and needed wheels to the city, correct? But could it have been the complete opposite and he was high as could be and was so whacked out of his mind (that he committed a double murder)? Better yet, could Mr. or Mrs. Roy have been on drugs as well and there was beef over something? Could the Roys not been into drugs but money-making and owed Mooney money? I’m just throwing possibilities out there, but I am a recovering addict with four years clean, and I know plenty of storybook people like the Roys who have a dark side that no one knows. Honestly, regardless of the outcome of the case, it would never come out that anything like that played a role because that would go against everyone making this (a) cold-blooded murder case, and make everyone look bad who jumped to conclusions before ALL of the information was available.”

The reader isn’t alone. I’ve received a variety of correspondence like this, which raises questions about the victims, Tyler and Christina Roy, and implies they may have been responsible for their own deaths, which were especially brutal. They suggest alternative theories for Daniel Mooney’s motive in entering the young couple’s house late at night, viciously stabbing them, and then blasting them with Tyler Roy’s own shotgun.

The alt-theories go like this: One or both of the Roys were drug dealers … Mooney was hapless and helpless in his addiction … Where did the Roys, in their late 20s, get the money to live in such a nice neighborhood? ... Mooney was yet another victim of pill-pushing Big Pharma.

See the pattern? Blame the victims, but sympathize with the drug-addled killer who, if you didn’t know, was found dead in Kensington of a heroin overdose hours after the murders. Mooney left no note, the Bucks County prosecutor said, so it’s unlikely his death was deliberate suicide.

I have not read the police reports, because they are not yet available, and may never be available, given that all involved in this sad case are dead.

But nothing I’ve been told by the Bucks County DA’s office implies the Roys were anything but a wonderful young couple. This was confirmed by their neighbors, who I spent an afternoon interviewing. They told me the Roys were looking forward to the wedding of Christina’s sister, which was to be held last Saturday. Her sister and fiancé had purchased a house on the same street. Family people. Tight-knit. Employed. Busy with life.

Nothing has been released by the DA indicating what drug, if any, Daniel Mooney may have been hopped up on when he broke into the Roys' house and killed them. And even if he was out of his mind on meth or PCP or whatever drug makes it easier to commit a double homicide, how does that mitigate culpability?

This is the great change since 1980s and 1990s, when addiction to hard drugs and the mayhem that came with it was treated as a criminal matter, not a health issue, as we enlightened types now see it.

I lived in North and West Philadelphia at the height of the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s, which soaked neighborhoods in chaos and crime and murder. It was so bad that city police in the 25th precinct (Hunting Park) called their North Philly patrol “the badlands.”